ericbabe
Posts: 11927
Joined: 3/23/2005 Status: offline
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Several systems of rules miniatures that I've looked at or played under limit the sighting distance of units to a few hundred yards even on open terrain on the notion that even open, flat ground is never actually perfectly flat. If I remember correctly, the system I used to play Napoleonics miniatures with ("Napoleon's Battles", green box) limited sighting to 300 yards, which is much more extreme than FOF. So it may seem a little unusal to limit sighting in this way, but as far as gaming systems go it's not at all unprecedented. Regarding frontage sizes, brigades would sometimes deploy with larger frontages, sometimes with smaller, depending on the situation and their strength. As a matter of theoretical calculation, a fully stocked brigade could take up between 300 and 400 yards of frontage with skirmishers deployed, but I don't think this theoretical size was often realized on the field; I did a few calculations where I found statistics for total battle frontage sizes and the number of men who participated in the battle, and (for the battles I looked at) the average is a little more than 100 yards for a brigade. Since we do allow brigades to split into two separate detailed combat units, a brigade that splits into two units and forms up side-by-side takes up about 200 yards, so players do have the option to cover larger frontages with more fully stocked brigades.
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